A news brief in last Saturday's Express-News noted that our Central European allies are "miffed."

The story was culled from a candid commentary in the Nov. 7 edition of the Washington Post written by Radek Sikorski, Poland's former deputy minister for both defense and foreign affairs. He now works for the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

During the war on Iraq, Poland deployed a 250-man special forces unit. Now it is in charge of the predominately Shiite area between Basra and Baghdad. Maj. Gen. Andrzej Tyszkiewicz commands a division of 9,500 soldiers — 2,400 Poles and the rest from Spain, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, the Ukraine and 13 other nations.

Sikorski reflected that Central Europeans "never felt threatened by Saddam Hussein, and they were skeptical of intelligence reports about his weapons of mass destruction. ... They hoped their participation would produce feelings of reciprocal commitment: Surely, most believed, the United States would want to show that it pays to be America's friend."

And what was the payoff to be? In part, contracts.

During the 1980s, some 16,000 Polish engineers and construction workers went to Iraq to build roads and factories and work in the oil fields and on the electric grid. The Iraqis never paid them for much of the work, a tab estimated at $700 million.

Although they hold out little hope of being repaid, Poles were optimistic that their experience would bump them to the head of the line when reconstruction contracts were awarded, pumping money back into their own struggling economy.

No Polish companies have been awarded contracts yet. But it's not for lack of trying.

In July, according to the BBC, Nafta Polska, a state-owned company representing oil and gas companies, signed a cooperation agreement with Kellogg, Brown & Root. The subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, has been awarded several big-dollar contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq.

At least 500 Polish businesses have officially put their hats in the ring to be subcontractors for U.S. firms, some opening offices in Baghdad.

Citing an interview with the Polish news agency PAP, the BBC quotes Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz as saying, "We have never hidden our desire for Polish oil companies to finally have access to sources of commodities." Access to the oilfields "is our ultimate objective," he said.

The Polish government usually presents its involvement in more altruistic terms. Polish leaders claim their peaceful overthrow of communism in 1989 could be an example to Iraq in its own transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Last week Poland suffered its first wartime military casualty since World War II when Maj. Hieronim Kupczyk was killed in an ambush about 35 miles south of Baghdad.

Popular support for the occupation, never robust, is waning. A recent poll shows 57 percent of Poles opposing the deployment. Sixty-eight percent fear their involvement has made them a prime terrorist target.

In building the so-called coalition of the willing, the Bush administration used the carrot-and-stick routine. You're either with us or against us. Poland, eager to tighten ties with the United States, chomped on the carrot. I don't fault them for expecting their cut of the kielbasa.

I do find it distasteful, however, that our government is treating Iraq reconstruction contracts as a private pork barrel. The rest of the world already has made the connection between the awarding of prime contracts and contributions to Republican campaign coffers. Now there's confirmation that subcontracts are being dangled as prizes for playing along with U.S. foreign policy.

Last January, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sneered at "old" Europe — France and Germany, which opposed a war with Iraq — and predicted that "Europe's center of gravity is shifting to the east."

We've put ourselves between a rock and a hard place. If we dole out contracts as rewards for good behavior, we look self-serving.

If we ignore Central Europe's expectations, "miffed" could easily evolve into "mad." The sooner we turn the contracting over to a neutral third party, the better off we will be.

Susan Ives can be reached at suives@texas.net.